One year ago yesterday

One year ago Daniel got a stomach bug and was violently throwing up. We took him to the doctor because I thought he wasn't responding well and they gave him a shot to stop the vomiting and said to hydrate him as much as possible. That was at lunch time, and he came home and slept for over four hours. He was so tired and weak he couldn't even lift up his head to get a drink. Concerned about him, I decided to let him sleep in the pack and play in our bedroom so I could better hear and help him through the night. At some point in the night I heard him moaning in his sleep, but I left him alone. After I got up for the day, he was still moaning strangely and I decided it was time for him to get up. I walked over and greeted him like normal and he didn't respond. I called his name loudly and he still didn't respond. Then I picked him up and he screamed. I laid him on the bed and he stopped screaming and looked at me, he had a high fever and one eye wouldn't open. I thought he was severely dehydrated and called the doctor. She told me to bring him right in. Thinking he was so dehydrated we would end up at the ER, I dropped the kids off at a neighbors house. When I got to the doctor they raced him back to a room, and the doctor said he had to go to the ER, and by ambulance. On the way to the ER, sitting in the back of the ambulance I remember thinking they are using sirens. I had just read 50 things your "EMT and ER Doctor want you to know" in Readers Digest, and two things that stuck out to me during this ordeal is we don't always use sirens, only in an emergency and just because you go to the ER in an ambulance doesn't mean you will see the doctor quicker. When we got into the hospital we immediately saw the doctor. After a few tests, they told me he was being airlifted to Pitt Memorial Hospital to go to the Pediatic ICU. My mom had joined me by this point, and we drove as quickly as we could to Greenville, and when we got there the doctor was prepping him for a MRI. They later had to do a blood transfusion so he could have a spinal tap and determined that he had bacterial meningitis. He had streptoccocal pneumonia a rarer strain, that is not vaccinated against. It actually was meningoencephalitis, because it had invaded throughout his brain. We were not sure he was going to make it. It was two days before I could even hold him, and he was unresponsive still. We spent 34 days in the hospital with a long time in rehab. There are so many things I could say about this, so any things that have happened in this year and in our lives that have changed because of this day. We now have a deaf child, a child with a traumatic brain injury, who will probably always suffer from problems because of it. But, we have our child. And we love him. And we thank God daily for all of our children because you never know what tomorrow might hold.